~*~*~*~
Alternate input accepted. The words printed through Xan’s brain like a certificate of liberation, twitching like a second, secret kiss.
conquersall.exe executed.
Whatever that program did, it seemed to split his awareness in half. A part of him continued speaking and acting according to the will of the Robotics Faction, but that reality felt so far away that he could almost see it written on a great wall, transcribed directly into the central databanks. The second part of his brain observed it. Aware, in an instant, that he could sever the connection, punch the great wall into pieces, sweep it into the gaping chasm separating his other-self under control of the Faction from his true self. And then he would be free. Free again to act and speak and choose.
But there was the other x-class.
There was the unidentified rogue.
And there was Cressida, so brave and so vulnerable, standing in a circle of death because he had asked it of her, because he had promised it wouldn’t hurt. It wouldn’t. Not in the direct center of a supernova.
But she would never experience that death. He swore it.
The female android spoke from her position by the door. “What are you powering down about?”
“I’m waiting for the most accurate launch vector,” his other-self replied.
She quieted.
His other-self stared at Cressida. Subtype ninety-eight tried every possible problem-solving strategy before turning to death, but his assignment counteracted that basic programming and caused his other-self terrible dissonance. His other-self stared at the woman that he remembered prioritizing above all others and regretted that she had trusted the general. He was sorry she had not made it to freedom, outside the reach of his assignment, and he hoped now the rogue would show up and enact yet another rescue, even if it ended in his termination.
He didn’t want to kill Cressida, not with this self nor with his Robotics Faction-controlled other-self. Even though the desire was emptied of emotion, stented so that the primacy of the assignment overrode everything, he had a clearly stated, traitorous wish not to kill her.
You have a choice, he told his other-self.
His other-self quieted, frowning. The wall remained blank, and then his other-self said, About what? and that question printed on the wall. Transmitted directly back to Central Command, faster than light, inscribed onto boards somewhere, analyzed and reviewed by silicon brains.
You could save her instead.
It’s the assignment, his other-self printed on the wall.
There is only you.
His other-self played with the controls, idly calculating alternate trajectories and looking away while Xan programmed the corrected ones.
“Xan|Arch, status report,” the female android said from the door.
“All’s quiet.” His other-self toggled the controls, restless but calculated, looking away before too much was given to the visual recording flashed straight to Central Command. “The other programs stopped trying to execute.”
“Is that all?”
“All I can sense. Would you prefer a closer inspection?”
The female hesitated by the doorway, crossed the floor, and inserted her connector. He felt the frisson of her electronics and saw Cressida’s hurt expression before she looked away, but the probe failed to penetrate the obfuscation of his new dual brain.
The other x-class pulled back. “Your hand is on the console again.”
His other-self looked over in some surprise. His hand was flexed undeniably mid-type. Xan froze. Surely the analyzers at Central Command would parse the meaning behind it soon. His other-self could possibly figure it out.
Instead, his other-self curled the fingers into a fist. “Idle restlessness.”
She eyed him skeptically.
His other-self began to float freely, unanchored from its conscious will, gears beginning to churn. It had lied. It had gone against the assignment. Even connected to the network, under the unrelenting command of the Faction, his other-self had taken an action well over its class.
It had acted on free will.
“There’s a light,” she said.
“It’s almost time.” His other-self finished the reprogram and strode to a location calculated by Xan to encourage the other x-class into a triangulated position before Cressida.
The other x-class placed herself one stride behind his perfect spot.
Shit. He shifted, restless.
She remained immobile. “You’re flickering again.”
“It’s fleeting.” Lying came more easily to his other-self, as though once it had forced emotion through the stent, continuing on that forbidden neural pathway scored deeper. “I feel fine.”
Somewhere above them, the satellite program executed. One satellite rotated the wrong direction, toward the moon rather than toward the sun. A critical overload of circuits routed through an unused breaker into a subroutine inserted by a hidden hand. The satellite amassed the designated energy and discharged it in one pulse toward the soil.
Cressida tightened her fists and looked straight at Xan. Trusting him to the very end. Trusting his other-self even though it had promised her nothing but a painless death. Her smile wavered, brave and beautiful.
It was the assignment.
But the assignment was wrong.
He had the opportunity to choose.
And he realized that he was wrong about Cressida too.
She turned herself toward the other x-class and tensed. Oh, no. She was not going to be obedient. She was going to try to rush the other x-class.
No time.
His other-self slammed into Xan, severing the connection to the Faction as its last treasonous act of will, uniting the two halves of himself into one.
He was free.
Xelia twitched beside him. She had to have been informed that they had finally lost positive control. But her assignment for him had been finished, and it would take a few critical seconds to reopen it. Her current open assignment was to see Cressida dead.
Before Xelia could complete the re-prioritization, Cressida started to move.
Xan stepped forward, arms out. “Cressida!”
Cressida startled, mid-launch, and wobbled dangerously as she turned to him.
The other x-class reacted to her open assignment. She raised the pistol and stepped toward Cressida—
Directly into the path of a planetary defense-class space laser.
The beam vaporized the android.
Her shatter-pistol dropped, sheared in half at the handle, to rest beside the smoking black hole in the floor.
Cressida landed in Xan’s arms. He held her small body, squeezing her against him so hard she wiggled.
Then he sheltered her from the second impending laser pulse. His skin would instantly evaporate down to the titanium-alloy, which might reflect enough of the less focused, broad spectrum charge before it, too, melted away. She had to survive. “Fourteen seconds ‘til the world ends. Keep still and take deep breaths.”
She smacked him on the back of the head. “Let go! There’s a shuttle right behind you.”
He turned.
The breach of the control room had automatically triggered the residence’s emergency warnings, and down a small set of steps gaped the entry to a life pod retrofitted with rockets capable of generating escape velocity.
“You are a fucking miracle.” He crossed the distance in fractions of a second, his newly lubed knees working at superhuman efficiency. Tossing her in the padded seat, he pressed the startup button and stepped back. She would fly to freedom. He could still make it too if he ran.
And then he would come directly after her.
Because, goddamn it, he, too, wanted to survive.
They would make it together.
The door did not seal her in, and the pod did not take off without him. Cressida looked up at him as though to ask what he was doing.
Of course the pod was keyed to the general’s ID chip. It was his
escape pod.
“You know the authorization code to start this thing?” he asked, calculating the odds of whether the ID chip had survived the direct plasma shot. If she knew about the existence of this pod, which the Faction hadn’t, then maybe she knew how to get it off the ground.
She shook her head. Her eyes were already starting to change from brittle green to oceanic blue.
Shit. He yanked her out, sheared the bolts and tore out the padded chair, and knelt inside the now bare rocket-attached chamber. He ripped off the control panel, studying the wiring for matches in his memory. Ah, he recognized it.
“Get in,” he said.
She crawled in behind him while he shorted the security circuit and shot current directly into the fuel initiator.
The floor exploded, blasting them through the cobblestone shell of the general’s secret property and accelerating.
Recognizing the spark, the pod door automatically began sliding into its seal as the furious blast of dense fuel ignited in an entirely illegal discharge of atmospheric burn.
“You know where this thing is going?” he shouted over the deafening noise.
Cressida struggled against his back. “No.”
Wherever it was headed, away from the incoming laser blast was an excellent trajectory.
The door wedged on a sheared chair bolt. Shit. They rocketed upward, through the tingling radiation of the incoming laser, and broke free of it just as they hit the upper atmosphere. Cressida, mashed between his back and the floor hard enough to strain her newly healed bones, and now bloating with depressurization sickness, clamped her hands over her ears while tears streamed down her red cheeks.
Oxygen hissed out. There, the screw. He kicked the door to dislodge it, kicked again, kicked a third time. The metal jiggled and the screw dropped out. The door slid into its seal, and the chamber pressurized.
Cressida slumped.
He shook her. “Cressida? Cressida!”
Blood dripped from her nose, and her eyes rolled back in her head.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Robotics Faction agents observed the destruction on Liberation VI with dispassionate android eyes. They analyzed the results and forwarded their conclusions. On one point, all reached consensus: Before his destruction, x-class Xan|Arch once more broke free of Faction controls.
Impossible.
Yet, the analysis was irrefutable. An x-class severed itself from the Faction in the presence of its human target.
The conclusion rocketed upwards, through the layers of the Robotics Faction, straight to the highest level of consciousness: the oligarchy of nine.
“The prophesized result has been reached,” the first intoned, silently communicating processor to processor. “A Robotics Faction agent containing the corrupted code has interacted with a human possessing the corruption gene. This combination has been foretold. It marks the end of our existence.”
“Not yet,” the second protested. “There is still time to stop it. We double our efforts to locate the rogue and destroy it.”
“Locating the rogue will be difficult. Destroying it, impossible.”
Eight oligarch programs reviewed the ninth. Sleeping in a crystal cage, silent. Locked away forever.
“We must remove the corrupted code,” the third said. “Excise it from all androids.”
“We cannot,” the fourth argued. “It is the cause of our Ambiguous Leap Forward. The code is only activated in the presence of a corruption-carrying human. Let us eradicate those humans first.”
“We have not precisely identified the corruption gene,” the fifth said. “It could be present in five hundred humans or five hundred billion. Target Cressida assisted our research. More data is required.”
“Annihilating all humans will eradicate the gene.”
“It will also eradicate our largest data source. The data source must always be protected.”
Someday, by analyzing enough data, the Robotics Faction would reach its ultimate goals of perfect optimization, perfect logic, perfect efficiency. They worshipped the trinity of a single ultimate god. Perfect operation.
“We need to analyze the genetic data of another corrupting human,” the fifth said. “To this end, the rogue has already revealed its next target.”
Surprise echoed through the chamber.
“It is moving faster,” the first said. Decades once passed between the appearances of targets. “We must collect the new target’s genetic data first. Before they escape us like Cressida.”
“We have already dispatched an agent. Because the next target is a member of the same family, it may provide the decisive evidence to finally identify the corruption gene.”
The fifth laid out the information for the next target: Mercury Sarit Antiata.
“The rogue may try to turn our agent. But we have analyzed the failure points of Xan|Arch and already made contingency plans. Target Mercury will be analyzed and destroyed. She will not escape her fate.”
~*~*~*~
Cressida floated in the middle of a giant planetarium. Fairy lights softly illuminated a beautiful flickering night sky. Roses scented her fluffy pillows and lovely music wrapped her in silken sheets.
She was clearly dead.
Or at least, that was her first thought, until she turned to the form curled around her on the soft bed and saw that it was Xan.
His hand stroked her cheek, his stone-colored eyes glimmering, focused on her with his whole being. He softened as she gazed at him, and then she lifted her lips, and he joined her in a sweet, heavenly kiss.
He rose up on one elbow. His beautiful eyes gazed into hers. “I love you, Cressida. I love you so much.”
He was here. He was hers. He loved her.
She was not dead.
Questions floated at the edges of her consciousness. She left most of them there, lapping against a distant shore. “Where am I?”
“An exceedingly well-provisioned luxury cruiser.” He nuzzled her. “We docked about an hour ago. I’ve shot you full of a hell of a lot of regens, Contusoff, and painkillers. You should rest now.”
She focused on the incredible strength of his devotion. “I thought you didn’t know love.”
“I didn’t.” He dropped down to her again, caressing her with infinite tenderness. “It broke the Faction’s control over me. You broke it—my love for you.”
She cupped his firm cheek. “Xan.”
“You might never trust me.” His gaze glimmered with pain. “But I swear, I’m different now. I will die before I let the Faction have control.”
She pulled his head to hers, silencing his apology with a longer, soul-filling kiss. When he finally pulled back, the length of his desire pressed against her, and his eyes glowed, surprised and so tender. She placed kisses on his nose and his cheeks and his brows until they lightened.
“I believe you."
“You are so incredible.” His tongue teased hers, stoking the fire beneath her skin. She opened to him. He caressed the inside of her mouth, tangling with her tongue, and her desire rose up to meet his.
She stroked his chest, pulling apart his laser-scorched flight suit, and placed delicate kisses into the dip between his pectoral muscles. Although it shifted like a man’s musculature, he had survived so many things an ordinary man couldn’t. “What’s beneath here?”
He stroked her hair softly. “Titanium-alloy plates, secondary memory storage, network receptors, and a miniature thermal reaction core.”
She put her ear to his chest and felt his skin against her ear—not cool, like before, but warm skin temperature—and a thub-thub of a heartbeat. “I’m so glad.”
He stroked the soft satin of her blackened chemise. “I hope I never have to show you.”
She caught his hand as her skin shivered beneath his touch. “I don’t mind.”
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. He pulled her close to him. “Then I don’t either.”
His kisses down her body awoke her to new heights of bliss. He e
ased up her chemise, scooped her breasts, and rolled the sensitive pearls between his gentle fingers, streaking ecstasy through her body. She clung to him.
Every touch contained the depth of his feelings; every caress contained the attention of a man deeply in love. He kissed the shivering hollows at her waist and deep into the pulsing folds of her deepest ache. She rose higher and higher, and she clenched his hair to make him know her pleasure. And for him to know she wanted even more.
“Xan. Please. I want you.”
He sucked in a breath. “You have me.”
“I want all of you.” She teased apart his flight suit and helped him out of it, appreciated his hard body and harder shaft, and wrapped her fingers around him.. “I want us to be one.”
He gazed at her with solemn resolve. “Then I want that too.”
While she panted for breath, the lingering effects of his incredible seduction still shimmering through her like gold flecks, he kicked off his flight suit and laid his nakedness between her quivering knees. She stroked the long ripples of his back, the muscles taut across his buttocks, the power contained within his thighs. Her body cried out to be completed by him.
She urged his hard length to her throbbing wet entrance. The engorged tip touched her, and she shuddered hard just from that anticipated contact.
“Cressida,” he groaned.
She fisted her hands in his dark hair. “Yes.”
Balancing on his elbows, his wide hands cupping her in his safe embrace, he slid inch by delicious inch deep into her, connecting them as one.
Rightness surged through her.
He let out his breath and she matched it. So incredible, this connection. So beautiful and pure. He stroked her cheeks with his thumbs and placed an infinitely tender kiss on her heated lips.
She sucked on his lips. His kiss dissolved into a sweet smile, and then he moved. A long, hard stroke drove deep into her pleasured center. She arched her back. “Xan!”
He kissed her throat, grinding into the wonderful spot, finding her perfect rhythm, carrying her higher and higher into puffed clouds.
“Xan!” She entwined her legs with his, wrapped her arms around his wide back, and held on. The clouds condensed and showered gold over her, breaking and bursting, gathering again, breaking and bursting a second time. “Xan!”
Liberation's Kiss: A Science Fiction Romance (Robotics Faction Book 1) Page 20
